04-26-12: Almarg
My statement that:
...the net voltage at any instant of time will be the NUMERICAL SUM of the individual amplitudes (voltages) of each frequency component at that instant of time...
had nothing to do with intermodulation distortion, or with the sum and difference frequencies that intermodulation distortion results in. It was simply a description of the voltage at any instant of time of DC that is noisy.
Got it! That clears up the confusion (mine, not yours). I was just thrown when, for some reason, I thought you were talking about the frequency intermodulation of DC voltage and noise. Sorry for my misunderstanding!
Your subsequent explanation of frequency intermodulation is very well described, and something I feel like I understand at the level at which you describe it.
What still remains a bit murky to me, as I mentioned in my last post, is the explanation of intermodulation at the level of voltage/current. Is intermodulation better understood as a fluctuation of voltage or a fluctuation of current? I understand that you can't change one without changing the other (Ohm's law), so maybe that question is meaningless. I would just like to have a better mental picture of what those electrons are doing! :-)
Bryon